A large-scale deployment of the third Generation (3G) Mobile Communication greatly promotes use of data services. Accurate charging of a data service is a basis of data service development. Policy and charging control (PCC) is a PCC mechanism that is defined by the 3G Partnership Project (3GPP). A core of the PCC mechanism includes when a data flow bearer is established, a gateway device requests, from a Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF), a PCC rule of a service data flow. If an application function (AF) provides service layer information of a service to the PCRF, the PCRF generates the PCC rule according to subscriber information stored in a subscription profile repository (SPR), bearer layer information provided by a gateway, and some local policies and service layer information that are configured by an operator in the PCRF, and delivers a command to a PCEF in the gateway to install the PCC rule that is generated. The PCEF performs resource allocation, data flow control, and charging control according to the PCC rule. The PCC mechanism may perform precise control on the service data flow according to an operator policy to implement refined bandwidth operation.
In the foregoing PCC mechanism, the AF is a service network element, and provides related information of a service accessed by a user. For example, the AF can provide information such as a service identity, a service priority indicator, and a service urgency indicator to the PCRF.
In the PCC mechanism, the PCRF is a policy decision entity, and is responsible for controlling quality of service (QoS), a bandwidth, gating, and a charging control policy when user equipment in a home network uses a service, and generating a dynamic policy or specifying a static policy, where the dynamic policy or the static policy is executed by the PCEF.
The PCEF is a policy execution entity, used to execute the dynamic control policy delivered by the PCRF or the static control policy specified by the PCRF. The PCEF may be located in a gateway device, for example, a Gateway General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) Support Node (GGSN), a Packet Data Network (PDN) Gateway (P-GW), or a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) gateway.
The SPR is a subscription data storage entity, and stores subscription data of a user and maps the subscription data onto an existing system, which may be an online charging system (OCS).
U.S. Patent Application Publication US2015/0156334 A1 discloses a charging control method, a charging trigger apparatus, and an online charging system. The method includes generating, by a charging triggering function (CTF), a resource quota request according to a trigger condition, and sending the resource quota request to an online charging system (OCS), so that the OCS determines a quota type and number after receiving the resource quota request, and allocates a quota for the resource quota request according to the quota type and number determined by the OCS, where the quota and number are determined by the OCS according to the resource quota request.
However, in other approaches, charging of a sponsor is limited only to an offline charging mode. Consequently, a particular service data flow sponsored by the sponsor cannot be online processed, and traffic/duration sponsored by the sponsor cannot be used by an online credit control user in an online credit control process. Therefore, credit control on the user cannot be implemented when the user and the sponsor share costs.